Family Trees - Just a thought!

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

After hearing on the News today in the UK, about a DNA test to prove paternity and these tests were not available two hundred years ago, why do some people and the makers of the software think that the male line is the most important?

Let's be honest ...... one can only be 100% certain as to who is the Mother of a child, so I just wonder how many of us are researching the 'wrong male line'?

I'm not a feminist by the way, but my brother is only interested in our Father's paternal line ...... I'm the one who is researching all the female lines in our family.

[Geoffers]

After hearing on the News today in the UK, about a DNA test to prove paternity and these tests were not available two hundred years ago, why do some people and the makers of the software think that the male line is the most important?

My main line of research is my family name in Norfolk - but for several years now, I have also been tracking my mother's, mother's, mother, etc. It is a very interesting challenge being faced by a new surname almost every generation. Why not every generation? - well I have Holdens and Haworths from East Lancashire and anyone researching them will be aware that they turn up by the bucketload in this area. Still, even with this, I would thoroughly recommend tracking a maternal line.

I'm not a feminist by the way

Me neither

Geoffers

[Guy Etchells]

I don't know about "most important" but the male line is easier to research due to the surname being constant (in most cases).
Researching the female line involves name changes and adds an extra complication.
There is also the fact that as the research progresses back often only the fathers name is noted in the register as the mother is one with him.

Then of course there is the heraldry aspect where inheritence follows in tail male.
Cheers
Guy

[Linda]

I don't know about "most important" but the male line is easier to research due to the surname being constant (in most cases).

I guess my birth surname is one of those other cases then, as I cannot find a trace of my Dad's paternal grandfather prior to his marriage in 1890 .

Linda

[robdurk]

Like Geoffers my interest is in my family name and its origins and pretty much constitutes a one-name study, though not registered as such.

With only 108 of us in the UK it's a matter of great interest to me (and most of the others) to see how we're related.

The rest of my heritage isn't unimportant, just perhaps forms less of an intriguing puzzle. At the moment, anyway. I expect when (if??) I run out of Durks I'll head back and start one of the other lines.

I won't have to, of course. After all I'm only on here and Ancestry with Legacy running (and a couple of spreadsheets) at 3am for relaxation.

I can give it up any time. Honest.

[Procat]

And so say all of us.

[Diane Grant-Salmon]

Thankyou all for your input and comments about Title and inheritance, not forgetting the few females who 'slip through the net'.

It's nice to know that there are gentlemen out there who are researching their maternal lines ...... of course, with so many lines to follow, nobody is ever going to 'finish' researching, so no chance of ever getting bored because there's nothing to do!

Yes Guy, I did have a shock at the Archives in Wakefield, when trawling through my first PR Baptisms on microfiche, suddenly all the Mothers' names disappeared. That's when I came to a grinding halt as all the Fathers' and childrens' names were the same and I couldn't find out which twig they were on the branches of my tree.

[Pam Downes]

Let's be honest ...... one can only be 100% certain as to who is the Mother of a child, so I just wonder how many of us are researching the 'wrong male line'?

Not in these days of surrogacy and donated eggs etc.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave" for our descendants.

Pam Downes

[Peggy]

My father's father's father's line runs into a . Aren't I lucky that he married a woman whose various lines can be traced back to the early Dutch arrivals in NY, and that the Dutch were "feminists?" (They recorded women under their birth names, women owned property, went to court, made wills. . . .)

Well then, I could try my mother's father. But I hit the same around 1800. Lucky that his mother's mother's family can be traced back to the late 1600s in Worcs.

You can even find some information about those precious male lines by looking at female lines, given that people often married into the same families or married 2nd cousins.

Peggy

[Groves Genealogy]

...... of course, with so many lines to follow, nobody is ever going to 'finish' researching, so no chance of ever getting bored because there's nothing to do!

Ahhh, but you are so wrong there - I saw an 1891 London census set of CD's for sale on EBay a little while ago because the owner 'had finished her family tree'!!!!!!

Linda.